Preparations for the winter Hungarian appetizer. Hungarian appetizer "Uncle Vanya": recipe, ingredients. Food preservation methods

09.10.2021

The concept of "Canning food" includes a huge variety of not only recipes, but also methods of harvesting for the winter. Our new section "Home canning" will collect bit by bit all types of blanks for the winter. After all, winter in those parts where we live is often long, snowy, cold. And the cold requires the support of the body with vitamins. In turn, where can the body find living vitamins from during the cold season? Only from homemade products, which the housewives took care of during the productive summer.

Canning at home

Food preservation adheres to the main goal - preservation of fruits, vegetables, berries, greens for as long as possible, so that when preserving and processing food in this way, the effect of microorganisms on them is stopped. What are the ways to preserve food?

The most useful, convenient, quick way to preserve food for the winter is to freeze it. But for this method of preparing food for the winter, the temperature in the freezer of your refrigerator should be no higher than 12 degrees and up to minus 25 degrees of cold. At these temperatures, food freezes evenly. The freezer makes it possible to store food in this way for several months. Moreover, the vitamin composition of products with this method of canning will not be disturbed. The main amount of vitamins contained in foods will remain unchanged.

The second way, which also preserves a large amount of vitamins in vegetables, berries and fruits, is drying them. An old, well-known way of storing a bountiful harvest from the garden.

The third way, in which you can find a lot of advantages, including a minimum of labor costs - and fermentation of products. The same method includes a similar method of preserving food - their urination. Food is salted and fermented with salt or brine and spices. Soaking is the next stage in the fermentation of the product, in which sugar and alcohol are added to give a special taste to the soaked products.

Home preservation

On the podium among home preservation methods, housewives still have cooking with sugar (usually berries and fruits), (preparing food using vinegar), preserving food in an airtight container. In the latter method, products prepared in a special way are sealed hermetically, then heated in water at high temperatures.

Whichever way of preserving the hostess's products, it is safe to say that we have recipes for food preparations for every taste. After all, there is nothing better than in winter, on cold long evenings, open a jar of another jam or vegetable salad, cook compote from freshly frozen or dried berries, eat sauerkraut or soaked homemade apples. And remember that the warm summer with its rich harvests of berries, vegetables and fruits is just around the corner.

Preservation not only helps to preserve food, but also gives us our favorite treats, without which a feast or family dinner cannot be imagined.

Popular canned foods:

Jam, jam, confiture, jam. From quince, physalis, apples, chokeberry, plum with nuts, cornelian cherry. All fruits, berries and even some vegetables serve as the basis for jam. The widest palette of taste in each can!
Preparation of fish and meat. Homemade stew, bacon and canned fish.
Berry and fruit puree.
Pickled vegetables. Not only cabbage can be fermented, but also other vegetables. However, sauerkraut is a traditional dish at all times.
Compotes, syrups, juices. Homemade, they are 100% natural, with no recovered ingredients or chemical preservatives. A great way to pamper children.
Canned mushrooms. Crispy mushrooms, delicious white, tender boletus mushrooms are the best appetizer on the festive table.
Pickles. Favorite cucumbers and tomatoes of various cooking methods - crispy, bright and aromatic.
Pickling. Eggplants, mushrooms, pumpkin and other vegetables in a special marinade.
Salads. Pumpkin, green tomato, winter salad and other combinations of your favorite foods.
Sauces. "Mother-in-law's language", adjika, homemade horseradish, "Gorynych" sauce are a great addition to meat dishes.

Decorating a table on gray winter weekdays is not difficult! You just need to get all the same bright and tasty vegetables or fruits from the jar. Our portal will not only introduce you to recipes, but also tell you all the secrets of housewives and professional chefs. The blanks for future use will not only be tasty, but also easy to prepare. Register, communicate!

Cooking is a limitless world for the embodiment of your desires and ideas. The website portal will be your faithful assistant on the way to perfect dishes.

I have already shown 2 types of Hungarian summer lecho: classic ("lunch") with white paprika and also with eggplant. She also talked about canned lecho and even showed the old Soviet home version (see all the links above). Let me remind you the key points again: "lecsó" is a Hungarian word, "Globus" is a Hungarian company, and the classic Hungarian recipe for canned lecho includes only paprika and tomato juice (grated tomatoes) from vegetables. Onions are very rarely added, and never carrots. Carrots are a very rare option, they can only be added to the "summer" lecho, but not to the "winter".

Interestingly, the classic version of lecho was even described in Soviet books on canning.

Pages from the collection "Canning fruits and vegetables at home", ed. Candidate of Technical Sciences Namestnikov A.F. (1967 edition).

Everything is simple, there is no need to complicate anything or invent anything. In my family, they also cooked this way, without onions, but sometimes they added a little garlic (see the recipe at the link above). Somehow we tried to cook with carrots, but it didn’t work: it’s very sweet and the taste of paprika is interrupted, in this form it got tired very quickly.

I remember that all Soviet rolls were served at the dinner and even on the festive table as cold snacks or additives to various salads, but the classic Hungarian canned lecho is never served cold! This is why it was invented in such a way as to be the basis to which you can add almost anything you want. If the onion is not included, then first it is chopped, fried, and then the contents of the jar are added to it and warmed up. Everything is as in the "lunch" lecho. You can add spices, herbs and serve with rice, legumes, eggs, Hungarian sausages and even thick soups.

Ingredients and preparation:

The classic base and cooking technology are unchanged, but the proportions of ingredients can vary in every family. Someone takes more tomatoes than paprika, and someone equally. In store canned food, as I said earlier, there are only 30-40% paprika. It is this "liquid lecho" that many Russian-speaking chefs do not like. And here you need to think again with your head and understand that different culinary traditions in different parts of the world may differ. Hungarian lecho should be what it is.

I have already shown lecho and other dishes with white paprika more than once, so now I took the same paprika, but at the stage of biological ripeness. Hungarians have a special variety called lecho-paprika or tv-paprika. White (green) paprika is the same, but at the stage of technical ripeness. I will not repeat myself, I talked about everything in the main articles about lecho. In the USSR, many culinary experts called a similar pepper "Bulgarian".

For the preparation of lecho and many other Hungarian dishes, sweet peppers, which the Hungarians call "california paprika", are not suitable, and the Bulgarians "kamba" are large, square, thick-walled, without a bright taste and aroma. I sometimes use it raw for salads, but not where cooking is required. Some Russian-speaking cooks also call such pepper "Bulgarian" for some reason. Here it is:

Photo from the Internet

For lecho, only a similar paprika is needed:

Photo from the Internet

This type of bush pepper for any lecho is taken at the stage of technical ripeness, i.e. when it is not yet red, although some of it is allowed to be replaced by almost ripe and completely red fruits at the stage of biological ripeness.

Hungarian lecho-paprika has such an aroma that, when cooked, drives everyone crazy :) It is impossible to pass by the house where paprika is prepared calmly, even if the windows are closed in it - the aroma flows out of all the cracks into the street! Her taste is also special.

Spicy paprika of various types can also be added to lecho, as well as replacing a certain amount of lecho-paprika with fleshy and tasty ramiro pepper, which in Hungary is called "kapia".

For my lecho, this time I took tomatoes and red (practically ripe) lecho-paprika in a 1: 1 ratio. Combination common in Hungary: tomato-paprika 2: 1. Sometimes tomato juice without pulp is used.

Tomatoes need to be peeled and then chopped: you can chop finely, or you can pass through a meat grinder or grate on a coarse grater. You can cut each tomato in half without removing the peel, cut out the stalk, and the peel itself will remain in your hands after the pulp is rubbed off on a grater.

It should look something like this. Whoever doesn't like tomato seeds can additionally grind everything through a sieve.

Chopped Tomatoes put on fire and boil about 2 times.

Paprika clean from the stalk and seed nest. Cut the pulp into strips (either along the length of the fruit, or cut each strip into 2-3 more pieces, as you like more). Add to the tomatoes and cook for 10-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the pulp softens a little (you can feel it with a wooden spatula). The cooking time depends on the amount of vegetables.

Salt, sugar: for 1 kg of paprika - 1 tbsp. sugar, 1 tbsp. salt. The proportions can be seen above on the pages from the Soviet book or be guided by the verified proportions to your other canned food.

Hot lecho put in warm sterilized jars (there should be tomato juice on top, or sometimes it is poured with a thin layer of vegetable oil). Close with prepared clean lids, put in a "dry bath" or sterilize in hot water.

I first wash all the cans well with baking soda, then I heat them in the oven: I set the temperature to 190-200 C, heat them for a couple of minutes, turn them off. I put the cans on the wire rack in the half-open oven. I boil the lids in hot water, wipe dry with a clean cloth.

Storage of ready-made canned food... Many Hungarians add salicylic acid as a preservative and antioxidant. This option was described in European cookbooks as early as 1950-60. Acetylsalicylic acid is part of aspirin, so some Soviet housewives added such tablets to their canned food. There are doctors in my family, but they never did that, although they were engaged in canning no less than other families.

Hot sterilization I will not describe, all our mothers and grandmothers remember this. Ask them or read the relevant literature of the Soviet period.

"Dry bath"... Arrange hot canned food in warm jars, close tightly with lids, wrap well with newspapers, blankets, sweatshirts and leave for 36-48 hours. In old books, incl. in Soviet, it is written that in very large jars, if you fill them with hot canned food, a priori, a temperature of about 70 C should be maintained for some time, i.e. natural sterilization occurs. Therefore, they can be additionally sterilized and not wrapped. In small banks, this regime needs to be maintained artificially.

All blanks (even those containing various types of preservatives) are best kept in a cool dry room anyway.

That's it with seasonal canned food, I just have to make a few jams with autumn fruits ...

Prepared for my catalog

Lecho is a great Hungarian appetizer, very popular and loved by many. And, as is often the case with famous dishes, lecho has many variations in performance. I also cook lecho for the winter, and, as you can imagine, there are several recipes for this preservation in my cookbook. Today I would like to introduce you to one of them.

Classic recipe

The peculiarity of this lecho is that in addition to the standard ingredients: tomatoes, bell peppers and onions, it also includes carrots. It gives the appetizer a special charm with its sweetness and perfectly complements the rest of the vegetables.

How does it taste? Fine!

The recipe for this blank is simple - you know, I don't like intricate preservation, which takes a lot of time and effort. No, this lecho will not cause you any difficulties, but I promise you an excellent result in the end! Such lecho can be not only an appetizer, but also an excellent vegetable side dish for meat dishes in the cold season.

Ingredients required

2 kg of bell pepper;
3 kg of tomatoes;
0.5 kg of carrots;
0.5 kg of onions;
1 head of garlic (4-5 cloves);
100 ml of vegetable oil (5 tablespoons);
5 tablespoons of vinegar 9%;
2-3 tablespoons of sugar (to taste);
2 tablespoons of salt;
ground black pepper to taste.

* The weight of the peeled vegetables is indicated. From this amount of ingredients, approximately 5 liters of preservation are obtained. If you want to cook a smaller amount of lecho, proportionally reduce all ingredients by 2, 3, or 4 times. Accordingly, the output of finished products will decrease by the same number of times.

How to preserve in steps

For preservation, choose ripe, fleshy red tomatoes. It is advisable to use bell peppers in a bright color - then the appetizer will be even more appetizing.

We wash the tomatoes and, after making a cross-shaped incision on the side opposite to the attachment of the stalk, pour boiling water for 2-3 minutes. Remove the skin from the tomato and chop finely. This can be done at will and at your discretion.

Peel the carrots and rinse thoroughly. We rub the carrots on a coarse grater.

Peel the onions, rinse and cut into small cubes, about 0.5 cm each. Peel the garlic, rinse and pass through a press.

We wash the bell pepper, cut it in half lengthwise, remove the sepal, seeds and partitions. Cut the pepper into about 1.5 cm pieces.

In a saucepan with a thick stainless steel bottom (in an enamel pan, the lecho will burn), pour half a glass of water and spread the tomatoes. Cover the saucepan with a lid and bring the mixture to a boil.